Bringing Adam Home (18 page)

Furthermore, one might wonder why on earth the detective did not take this opportunity to question Toole as to whether or not he’d had an encounter with a young girl in a Kmart during his foray to Hollywood back in 1981. After all, only two days before, Hoffman had listened to Arlene Mayer and her daughter Heidi describe their frightening evening in minute detail and witnessed them independently identify Toole’s photograph as the man they had seen. Had Toole verified the encounter—which had not been reported anywhere—it would have placed Toole in Hollywood at the time of Adam’s murder and in all likelihood put the matter to rest.

Vero Beach, Florida—October 27, 1983

T
he following Thursday morning, Judge Trowbridge of the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit of Florida, which includes Indian River County, where the crime was presumed to have occurred, ordered the appointment of a temporary public defender for Toole. Before a local defender could be appointed, however, Elton H. Schwartz, an attorney practicing in Miami, drawn by the publicity inherent in the case, offered his services to Toole free of charge. Subsequently, the court—now absolved of any expense in the matter—approved the arrangement.

While that was going on, Detective Hoffman set out on his rounds about Jacksonville, trying to substantiate the details of Toole’s story. First, Hoffman tracked down Faye McNett, who in fact recalled selling a 1971 Cadillac to Toole. It was a white car, with a black vinyl top, a four-door, McNett said, and while Toole wanted it badly, he didn’t have enough money to pay for it. He gave her a few dollars down, she recalls, and agreed to have her take $20 or $25 a week out of his paycheck until the balance was satisfied. Ultimately, he told her he couldn’t keep up the payments and would have to return the car, which she then kept in the roofing company’s compound.

If he had an extra set of keys to the car and was prone to “borrowing” it, she hadn’t known about it, but sure, she supposed it was possible. Lots of people had keys to the yard fence, McNett said. That was just how it was.

After he spoke with McNett, Hoffman interviewed John Reaves Jr., owner of Southeast Color Coat and the son of John Reaves Sr., owner of Reaves Roofing, where Toole had also worked occasionally. The last day Toole had received any pay for either company was June 4, 1981, Reaves said after a check of his records. Furthermore, Reaves did remember getting a phone call from the Salvation Army in Newport News, Virginia. They’d wanted to confirm that Toole did have a job to return to in Jacksonville, and Reaves had vouched for him. Toole had never actually come back to work at either his company or his father’s, though, Reaves Jr. said. As to whether or not Toole had a set of keys to the company compound where McNett’s Cadillac was kept, Reaves thought it was possible—one of Toole’s responsibilities was to let employees and their trucks in and out of the gate.

Meantime, just off Florida’s Turnpike at mile marker 126 in Indian River County, FDLE technicians were using a front-end loader to excavate the area where their scans had indicated buried objects were to be found. The machine scraped off four inches of earth at a time in all seven spots, down to a depth of two feet, but no clothing or remains were found.

Also that afternoon, Hoffman received a call from a Detective Steve Upkirk of the Oklahoma City Police Department. Based on statements made by Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole, his department had concluded that Toole was likely responsible for somewhere between four and six unsolved homicides in his jurisdiction, Upkirk said. In addition, there were other unsolved cases in other Oklahoma jurisdictions that Toole was probably responsible for as well. It wasn’t necessarily information that would help Hoffman in his own investigation, but it did seem to confirm that Ottis Toole was a very bad person indeed. With him in prison, the world was surely a better place.

On the following morning, Friday, October 28, Hoffman’s boss, Hollywood chief of police Sam Martin, found a letter from an attorney’s office in Miami waiting for him when he came to work. It was a notice from Elton Schwartz, Toole’s newly appointed public defender, advising Martin that forthwith his men were to cease interviewing his client, unless Schwartz was present.

At the same time, Hoffman was at the offices of Southeast Color Coat in Jacksonville, where clerk Ilene Knight dug out records to show that Ottis Toole had been employed by the company from 1976 through June 4, 1981. She did find that Toole had returned for work at the company after that, but it was only for a single day, in December of 1981. Toole had not worked for the company since, Knight was certain.

Next, Hoffman tracked down Georgia Toole, Ottis’s sister-in-law, who confirmed that she had in fact tried to have him arrested for stealing her pickup truck, just as the sheriff’s records showed. She also told Hoffman where he could find Norvella “Rita” Toole, Ottis’s wife. Rita told Hoffman that she had married Toole on January 14, 1977, and that in fact they were still married to that day. “But,” she told Hoffman, “he was always running me off, and I couldn’t figure it out, and one day I got thinking, I said, well, what would a man tell his wife to leave all the time for, unless there’s something wrong?”

Rita told Hoffman that she was away from Ottis so much that there wasn’t really a lot she could tell him. “The only thing, Ottis was good to me, and that’s all I know, he never mistreated me. He never beat me, he always called me baby, and I was kinda shocked when I heard all this.”

Following his interview with Rita, Hoffman met briefly with Vernon Toole, Ottis’s brother, and then with Mack Caulder, a foreman for the roofing company, but obtained little of use from either. A bit after 3:00 p.m. that Friday, Hoffman interviewed John Reaves Sr., the owner of Reaves Roofing. He confirmed that Toole had worked for him at times and was responsible for cleaning the compound and had access to the company gas pump and keys. He also told Hoffman that owing to a number of thefts on company property, he had all the locks changed back in 1982, some time after Toole had left his employment. Reaves remembered that Faye McNett had sold her Cadillac to Toole, and he assured Hoffman that indeed his company kept a number of tools on the property, including crowbars, shovels, and the like.

When Hoffman asked if they had any machetes, Reaves thought about it. “I believe we got one or two of them too,” he said. “It had a wood handle, I’d say about 10 or 12 inches, but I don’t remember seeing it lately.” At the conclusion of their interview, Reaves Sr. took Hoffman out to the company tool shed to look around for the machete, but they had no luck.

For all his work in Jacksonville, Hoffman had developed little of value. On the one hand, he had ruled out any possibility that Toole had been working for his old employers on Monday, July 27, 1981, the day that Adam was abducted, but on the other, he had found no one who could place Ottis Toole in any specific location—particularly Hollywood—between July 26 and July 30. This makes the failure to corroborate Toole’s encounter with Heidi Mayer all the more confounding.

In any case, while Hoffman had been busy with his interviews, Buddy Terry had set to work on actually finding the Cadillac that Toole claimed he had used during the abduction and murder, and which Faye McNett had long since sold. Terry finally tracked the then-twelve-year-old vehicle to an outfit called Wells Brothers Used Cars, at 4334 Brentwood Avenue in Jacksonville, and found that indeed it was a black-over-white four-door model with a black leatherlike interior, a black dashboard, black carpeting, and power window and door locks that could be controlled by a master panel in the driver’s armrest.

On Monday, October 31, technicians from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement were dispatched to pick up the Cadillac from the Wells Brothers lot and take it to the FDLE crime lab on Platen Road in Jacksonville, where it was to be examined for fingerprints, blood, and fibers. That same day, public defender Schwartz met with his client for the first time, and on Tuesday the attorney announced to reporters in Tallahassee that Ottis Toole now claimed that he did not murder Adam Walsh or anyone else. “Ottis Toole has denied every one of the crimes he’s confessed to,” Schwartz somewhat predictably said. Asked to comment, Hollywood chief of police Martin told the Associated Press that he felt his department still had a prime suspect in the case.

On that same Tuesday, Detectives Hoffman and Hickman were still in Jacksonville, interviewing Howard Toole, Ottis’s brother, at a halfway house. Yes, Howard told the detectives, when he found out that Ottis was back in Jacksonville on August 1, 1981, he had gone to Betty Goodyear’s rooming house to confront his brother about the theft of the pickup, and in fact he had chased him down to the nearby mini-mart, where he caught Ottis and slapped him around.

But as far as Ottis having keys to the Reaves Roofing compound or driving a 1971 black-over-white Cadillac, Howard claimed to have no knowledge. Nor did he know that Ottis had been hospitalized in Newport News. It was not unusual for Ottis to take off for weeks at a time without notifying him or anyone else in the family, Howard told Hoffman.

On Wednesday, November 2, 1983, FDLE technicians began their processing of the 1971 Cadillac that Ottis said he’d been driving when he kidnapped and killed Adam Walsh. Five rolls of film were used in photographing the interior and exterior of the vehicle, and the carpets were removed to be treated with luminol, a substance that glows when it comes in contact with blood.

In addition, the car was vacuumed and hair samples retained. Following all that, the vehicle was turned over to technicians in the latent prints section for processing. The various samples were sent off to the department’s microanalysis section in Tallahassee and its serology lab in Jacksonville, while the photographs were retained by FDLE’s Jacksonville office.

On the same day, Detective Hoffman spoke with Spencer Bennett, of Spencer Motors, at 1401 North Main Street in Jacksonville. Bennett claimed to have known Toole since he was seventeen and also said that he had sold him a two-door white Cadillac in 1982. That car had ended up with Ottis’s brother Howard, Bennett said, because—once again—Ottis couldn’t keep up the payments. Bennett described Toole as a quiet, meek individual. And if he was in fact a homosexual, Bennett said, it was news to him.

Hoffman then asked Bennett if he knew if Ottis ever carried a knife or machete around with him. Bennett told Hoffman that in fact he had found a machete in one of his vehicles a while back, though he didn’t remember exactly when or which car he’d found it in. He rummaged around in a closet and finally produced a machete with a wooden handle wrapped in black electrician’s tape, and housed in a green canvas sheath. The blade was rusty and had what looked like tar smeared on it. Hoffman was welcome to it, Bennett said.

Hoffman took the machete and traveled to the offices of Reaves Roofing, where he showed it to John Reaves Sr. Reaves glanced at the machete, but said it didn’t look familiar. For whatever reason, Hoffman didn’t bother to show the blade either to John Reaves Jr. at Southeast Color Coat or to company foreman Mack Caulder, both of whom worked more closely with Toole. While he was at the offices, however, Hoffman did take a statement from Helen Reaves, who told him that she had heard from a neighbor, Catherine Butler, that back in 1982 quite often a white car would turn up at the company gates after everyone had gone home. Whoever was in that white car would enter and leave the compound at will, Butler told Mrs. Reaves.

From Reaves Roofing, Hoffman drove back to Wells Brothers Used Cars to check on the provenance of the 1971 black-over-white Cadillac that FDLE was now processing. The records were spotty, but it appeared that they’d had the car since some time in the summer of 1982. They’d sold the car to a person named Ronald Williams on December 31 of that year, for $1569.75, but Williams had defaulted on the payments, and they’d had to repossess it. The Wells Brothers had had the car to themselves again until Detective Terry showed up and the FDLE came to take it away.

If all this seemed less than consequential, Hoffman had something of a more interesting conversation that evening at the Duval County Jail, where he interviewed Bobby Lee Jones, who not only had worked with Toole at Reaves Roofing and Southeast Color Coat, but had recently shared a cell with Toole for about a month.

In the days that the two of them had worked together, Jones told Hoffman, he knew that Toole had what he described as an “18-inch butcher knife” with a wooden handle under the driver’s seat of his car. Toole’s car was a white ’72 Cadillac with a dent in the right side of the rear bumper, Jones said. He remembered the dent clearly because he had put it there. “I ran into the back of him,” Jones said. “I never said anything about it, but I remember that dent.”

Jones said that Toole always carried a big ring of keys when he was working for the company and would often disappear from work for several days. He’d show up and explain that he’d been partying, Jones said, though Toole also claimed that he burned down houses for money.

As to their recent time together in the Duval County Jail, Jones told Hoffman that Toole had told him all about the kidnapping and murder of Adam Walsh. He said that Toole talked about driving up and talking to the boy and making friends with him, and then for some reason starting to beat him up and cutting him apart with a big knife. “I told him to shut up and lay down,” Jones said.

Following his conversation with Jones, Hoffman then interviewed James Collins, aka Julius Riley Wilkes, the other cellmate who had also worked with Toole at Southeast Color Coat. According to Collins, it was common knowledge that Toole was gay. Collins related an on-the-job incident at Southeast Color Coat where another worker was making deprecating remarks to Toole about his lover Henry Lee Lucas. According to Collins, Toole didn’t say much, but simply walked off the job abruptly. A few minutes later, Toole returned to work in his Cadillac with a shotgun under his arm. He approached the man who had been making fun of Lucas and pointed the barrel of the shotgun in the man’s face. “Just keep on talking and I’ll blow your brains out,” Collins reported Toole as saying.